Happy 14th Blogiversary To Ann Althouse!

Ann Althouse hits a blogging anniversary.

Today University of Wisconsin Law Professor Ann Althouse marks fourteen years in the blogosphere, and she’s apparently never missed a day:

I’m delighted to be still here, a blogger on Planet Earth, where I wake up every day able and genuinely excited to write a few more sentences. It’s a strange way of life, but it’s what I do.

Thanks to all of you who stop by to read and to get whatever value you might find here, including the chance to write a few sentences of your own.

Like many early bloggers, including myself and OTB’s Editor James Joyner, Althouse started out on the Blogspot platform, no doubt in part because it was free and because at the time there were very few other blogging platforms available, but unlike most of those early bloggers, she has stayed there rather than move to an independent server as many of us did once tools like WordPress became available. Perhaps the most notable thing about Althouse’s blog, though, is the fact that she hasn’t missed a day since the first post on January 14, 2004. That’s not something that most bloggers who have been at this for similar periods of time can claim. I have taken breaks at various points in time, as have many others, and some members of the original blogging crowd have either moved on to jobs writing columns or moved their blogs inside larger media organizations, something that Andrew Sullivan, to name one of the early blog pioneers, did several times before giving up The Daily Dish several years ago. Fourteen years is a long time — I didn’t start myself until July 2005 — but there were plenty of people who were already out there by the time she started, including our own James Joyner, who started as early as January 2003.  Glenn Reynolds started Instapundit some two years before that, and Andrew Sullivan started The Daily Dish in January 2001. Nonetheless, it’s a long time and, as someone who will be hitting fourteen years themselves in a few months, I can attest that it’s been an up and down experience but one that I’ve enjoyed immensely. In any case, Happy Blogaversary Professor!

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. PJ says:

    no.

    6
  2. Ben Wolf says:

    Congratulations to Lady Limbaugh!!! If only right-blogging hadn’t become irrelevant eight years ago!

    4
  3. Bill Jempty says:

    Althouse is one of the few non-sports blogs I still read though not regularly. The others are OTB and Volokh. Ann’s birthday was Saturday. I know because it is also mine.

  4. dino says:

    wow, 14 years of pounding out some of the most absurd crazy crank shit, makes you wonder how she’s still sane. anyway, normally she’d have no problem being anointed the most unhinged psychotic nut-job in her family, but good god, her son is like king of the incels

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  5. Lit3Bolt says:

    Happy 14th anniversary for special pleading and apologizing for the Iraq War.

    4
  6. EddieInCA says:

    No.

    If she’s a friend of yours, Mr. Mataconis, I apologize for what I’m about to say.

    No. She’s one of the most intellectually dishonest people out there, and the fact that she’s a law professor stuns me. Fact is that I’ve not read too many successful lawyers or law professors that are as intellectually dishonest as she’s shown over the years.

    So. No. I won’t be wishing her a Happy 14th Anniversary, or any other anniversary.

    https://forum.isthmus.com/viewtopic.php?t=19199

    https://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/06/16/defending-the-indefensible-ann-althouse-on-trumps-blood-libel/

    https://reason.com/blog/2006/12/29/grande-conservative-blogress-d

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  7. An Interested Party says:

    @EddieInCA: Hey, even dishonest propagandizers deserve to be noticed when they have an anniversary…

    1
  8. michilines says:

    Back in the day I was a little person with a little wordpress blog. Althouse mocked and attacked me. I will say no to wishing her anything.

    She got what she wanted. By attacking females, she built a male audience and celebrated getting linked by the likes of that disgraced law prof in Tennessee. At any rate, how hard is it to post a blog every day when you just copy and paste a New York Times headline in quotes and then say something pithy? I could do that twice a day and still do my day job. It’s not some sort of achievement really.

    4
  9. Sleeping Dog says:

    Hmmm, no. For a while I would go out to Althouse, knowing that I’d disagree with the analysis, but hoping that the reasoning would challenge my opinion, I was always disappointed. I’ve gone back to the Nat’l Review and American Conservative for a different perspective. Oh and her comments section is a cesspool.

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  10. Ben Wolf says:

    @michilines: I’d forgotten about the Tennessee murder-professor bringing the freedom of hitting people with cars. Look forward to Doug the “libertarian” commemorating him.

  11. I read plenty of blogs and other writers I disagree with, in some cases strongly.

    I posted about Althouse’s anniversary because I saw her post about it in my RSS feed. She’s one of the few bloggers out there out there who has been at it continuously and I felt like that deserved some recognition regardless of my opinion of the positions she takes, especially since I know what it takes to have the persistence to keep up with something like this. Like I said, I’ll be hitting 14 years myself in July, and that includes taking some breaks at various points along the way for personal and other reasons.

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  12. Ben Wolf says:

    There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reading people belting out drunken opinions and cliché policy positions that were dead years before Dick Cheney began shooting people in the face.

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